Sunday, January 10, 2016

Christmas in Utah

This Christmas break was so much fun. We got to be in Utah for a whole month. We did so many things over those couple weeks. I'll try to remember it all. We made gingerbread houses with all the cousins. Violet was loving it. She was pretty much in aw that there were bowls of candy everywhere and that she was allowed to put it all over a house and eat it. She had a lot of fun. My mom also did sugar cookies with the kids and let them decorate them with sprinkles galore. Vi seriously dumped every sprinkle she could find right on top of her cookies. So hers just ended up being massive mounds of sprinkles on a little bit of frosting. After cookies we went out to the lights in Kerns. They were so awesome and fun. They had thousands of lights timed to music and you drove through tunnels. The kids loved it.

Violet has been in absolute heaven with her cousin Jayne. They play princesses and dress ups all day. They have gotten to be the perfect little age for playing together. They got to have a dessert night together at Dear Lizzie. They wore dress ups together and got to pick a treat. While we were all sitting chatting the girls came over and told us they wanted to go on an adventure. I just watched them from a distance. They were dancing around the store and pretending it was a fancy castle. I just love them together and their sweet imaginations.

We spent a lot of time up at the cabin. Utah got dumped with so much snow while we were here. There was waist deep snow everywhere. The cabin was such a nice retreat. We played lots of games ( say anything lead to some awesome answers from Jayne and Max. We even got dad to play). We learned a bunch of new games We had yummy food and lots of fun in the snow. Mike and I dug lots of tunnels through the snow and made a sledding run for the kids. We watched movies and lots of people read and took naps.

Vi got pretty sick while we were up there. She threw up the day after Christmas and had diarrhea too. Then she got a bad cough and had serious growing pains. It was a lot going on for a sweet little girl. Gracie got it too. It was the only time she had ever just laid on me and snuggled for hours. It was heart breaking. Luckily the got over it after about a week. I felt so bad for them. I ended up staying with the girls a few times while Mike went and did things with his family. We just felt so bad dragging them around when they were feeling so lousy.

Dave and his family came up after Christmas. We were able to meet up with them for happy noon year and Provo Beach Resort and grab lunch in the River woods. We went to Grandma Reid's house and got to visit with her for awhile. Dave and Mike went snowboarding for a day up at Brighton. We also went out to Greg and Sherril's house a few times. We got to do our own Reid Christmas celebration with everyone at Annalee's house. We did white elephant and ate yummy food.

Christmas day was so great. Vi was super excited and loved her gifts. She played the whole rest of the day with all the toys that her and her cousins got. Violet only asked for a girl donkey for christmas. She had gotten a stuffed animal donkey let year and I guess she felt like she needed a girl one with a skirt. The only problem was that the donkey we had gotten her before was all sold out. So we tried to play it off and got her a hippo and I made a skirt for it. She didn't seem to mind. We made a really yummy big breakfast and lounged in our jammies the whole day.

On New Years Eve we went to Hans and Traci's house for a fun birthday party for Grandma Magleby. They had fun poppers and burned their Christmas tree out in the street. Vi loved playing with their dog Eddy and running around with cousins.

Mike and I got to see Star Wars and Hunger Games while we were out here. It is so nice to get some date nights in. Steve and Dayna were super nice to make some treks out to Alpine at night so we could play games and hang out.

Our friends Bree and Cory came over for a Sunday dinner, and it was so fun to get to see them and hang out. I miss getting to spend time with them and it was so fun to see all the kiddos together hanging out.

It has been such a wonderful trip and we are just so happy we got to spend the holidays with so many friends and family.